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Everyone’s talking about Assasin’s Creed III

I picked it up a few years back in a bargain bin, assuming I would like it. I mean, it’s about an assassin and it’s got sci-fi elements, and a cool, period setting. It’s sandboxy, what could go wrong?

And yes, it was pretty great. For the first couple of hours anyway. Then every gamer’s greatest fear crept in: monotonous repetition. Every mission stuck to the exact same formula. Eavesdrop here, pick a pocket there, use the information you get to go find a guy. Kill him.

There was absolutely no creativity applied to any of the missions (granted, I didn’t get anywhere near finishing it, as I had to go stick nails in my eyes instead). There were a limited number of ways of gathering information, you picked two, then you follow the radar to your target and kill him.

The whole process made no sense. There’s a guy in the city, and you don’t know where he is. But somehow, you know where five people are that know where he is. You know exactly what bench they’ll be sitting at, at the exact time of day. Or you’ll know the exact time and place they will be having a convenient conversation about your target.

"Hey, did you hear about that guy everyone wants to kill? He lives at 288 Elm Street. Apparently he loves leaving the back window open to air out the house."

If your intel is so ridiculously precise that you know where all these people are, why the hell can’t you find a single, high-profile target, who’s usually in the exact place you’d expect him to be?

I’d be willing to overlook the structural flaws if the gameplay was actually interesting, but it suffers from that repetitive “follow the waypoint, then follow another waypoint” structure that plagued so many GTA missions. And it least in GTA you can drive. Assassin’s Creed forces you to either run through crowds or run over rooftops that are impossible to fall from (thanks nanny-developers, isn’t there supposed to be a sense of threat in video games?)

The final payoff of killing a guy with one of your hidden blades is admittedly very enjoyable, but it’s small compensation for the kilometres of trudging boredom you must endure.

Apparently the second game fixed a lot of these problems, and was generally much better liked, but I just couldn’t bring myself to return to the world of Creeding Assassins. And then they started releasing a new game every 12 hours and I was way too far behind to care or catch up.

So while I’m less than enthused about Assassin’s Creed 3, I do think maybe I should let bygones be bygones and give it a proverbial whirl. But then I’m nowhere near finishing Skyrim, I’ve got a huge back-catalogue of unfinished games and Mass Effect 3 comes out today.

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3 responses to “Everyone’s talking about Assasin’s Creed III”

It’s true, the first one was a pretty lame game. But, trust me, they have improved the game and it is much better. It still has a few issues, but overall they realized what they had the first time wasn’t too good, and they corrected most of it. I think it’s worth giving a go – who knows, you may like it or hate it.